Thursday, March 21, 2013

It looks like the nuclear accident is so behind them in Japan, rat or no rat. Ministry of Health and Labor announced that the radioactivity testing for food items will be scaled down significantly, by exempting 34 items from testing.

That's 25% of food items that have been regularly tested since the start of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident.

They have been testing only 132 food items to begin with.

What's puzzling is that certain fruits that have consistently been found with elevated amounts (if not exceeding the safety standard of 100 Bq/kg) of radioactive cesium are going to be exempted - peaches, apples, and pears.

On March 19, the national government announced that certain leafy vegetables, fruits, and certain kinds of fish will be exempt from the tests conducted by the municipalities for radioactive cesium, starting April. The number of food items to be tested will be reduced from the current 132 to 98. It is the first time that the radiation test for food has been significantly revised.

同省は「検査で放射性セシウムが検出されない食品が多くなっているため」としている。

The reason given by the ministry is that radioactive cesium is not detected any more in increasing number of food items.

For example, the items to be excluded from the testing are spinach, lettuce, cabbage, daikon, potatoes and others for the vegetables, peach, apple, pear and others for the fruits, young lancefish, sardine, mackerel, yellowtail and others for the fish.

Well, as you know, peaches, apples, pears and persimmons from Fukushima will be sold to Thailand as "gourmet fruits" for the rich. JETRO just announced that Malaysia will no longer require the radiation test certificates for the food items from Japan. Rich Malaysians will get to eat those "gourmet fruits", too.

Information at the website of Ministry of Health and Labor is as clear as mud. You can't readily tell which vegetables, fruits and fish have been exempted by the Nuclear Disaster Response Headquarters. You have to know exactly what they have been testing (132 items) to know what will be exempt, as the ministry's press release only confirms what are still to be tested.

Such hypocrisy: demanding 100% of US beef be tested and not testing 100% of 100% of Japanese agricultural production. Personally, I'd rather die from forgetting who I am than from painful cancer. As I said before, I do not concede to the government the right to tell me what is safe. I want 0% radiation in 100% of my diet.

1. Government 'safety limit' on radiation in food was and is baseless.2. Not enough foods are tested, and not enough types of radionuclides, for this to be anything more than a simple token gesture to 'reassure the public.'

Worse, "contamination" (汚染) seems to be a dirty word. I mentioned it only few times, respectively when talking about the school swimming pool, the kindergarten sand and some wild boar meat; in all cases I have been greeted by wide open eyes saying "hush hush".

Today prime minister Abe mentioned that he wants to fight even harder the "damaging rumours". Maybe this curtailment of the analysis is part of measures aimed at stemming those rumors.No wait, government analysis are not supposed to be rumors and actually stamping food items with their contamination level should rather help to eradicate rumors.Oh well.. never mind.

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I wanted to email you but I couldn't find an address anywhere, so I'm writing this comment. For the many of us (lurkers like myself included), I am sure there is great interest in hearing what suggestions you or your readers have for taking reasonable precautions in today's Japan. Could you perhaps dedicate a blog post to this topic. For example: If you were to visit tokyo today, what foods might you be better off avoiding? Is there a way to read the labels of products to identify where they were grown (and which areas to pass on)? Do you still need similar precautions if you travel west to oasaka or even fukuoka? Thank you if you can make the time to comment on this, or if anyone can point in the right direction. And thank you again for this blog.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

About This Site

Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

Along with commentary on day's financial news, it also provides links to the sites with financial and economic news, market data, stock technical analysis, and other relevant information that could potentially affect the financial markets and beyond.

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